


Vast Ocean, Deep Sea

by lazarus_girl, spasticandviolent



Category: Faking It (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 00:17:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11279787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spasticandviolent/pseuds/spasticandviolent
Summary: Karma and Amy are well-adjusted to college life, back to being the best friends, with all their drama firmly in the past. History, or so they think. One picture, and one phone call derails all that progress, setting them on a very different path.“Time wasn’t on your side. It never has been.”





	1. Drowning on Dry Land [Amy]

**Author's Note:**

> AU (ish). Future fic. Follows canon up to S3 and deviates thereafter. Alternates between Karma and Amy’s perspective (indicated in the chapter title). Roughly occurs over a five year span. References to time relate to the events depicted in chapter one, and then it progresses forward or backward from that point. Title from the Peter Murphy song of the same name. Initially inspired by a picture on Katie Stevens'/Aisha Dee’s Instagram. Following this, each chapter is based around a particular object that’s woven into the story. You can see what they are [here](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0b67c043b698a494a9c887c244dda03b/tumblr_opw7rkaTRC1txkikoo1_1280.jpg). I’ll give more detail about each as we go. _Chapter object_ : a photograph. I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted something – life has a habit of getting in the way – but I have been writing a lot. This is just one of several projects I’ve been working on in these last few months. Hat tip to @spastandviolent as always, but in particular for later parts of this, reflected in the co-creator credit up there. She's the best!

_"Love isn’t soft, like those poets say._  
_Love has teeth which bite and_  
_the wounds never close."  
_ – Stephen King, _The Body._

***

Facebook. Facebook tells you Karma is in a new relationship. More specifically, a picture on your feed pops up and tells you. For a moment, you can’t do anything but _look_ at it. You can’t speak, you can’t think, you can’t even _breathe_.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen a picture of her in a dimly lit bar like this, you’re in college now. Every time you, she, or anyone else you know goes out, this is what your feed blows up with. It’s how you keep up with each other now that you’re spread across the country, her in New York, you in Seattle, and everyone else dotted around in between.

That’s not why you’re angry. That’s not why you’re on the verge of tears, open mouthed, staring at your laptop screen after you checked Facebook on a whim because the page was still open.

A mistake.

The seconds are ticking by into minutes, you’re meant to be going out with your friends and you’re half dressed, paralysed by _something_ , stuck in your desk chair, and your phone’s blowing up like you’re Time’s Square and it’s New Year’s Eve right before the ball drops. Messages illuminate the screen every few seconds. All you register is excessive use of caps and a string of emojis. You don’t have time to figure out who they’re from, or even if you care.

And now, now it’s ringing. Karma’s ringtone. Katy Perry’s ‘Chained to the Rhythm’ blaring out. She did it as a joke, a throwback to senior year, driving around with the windows down singing at the top of your lungs. You were both in a really good place, over everything, over everyone. Happy. Settled in yourselves and with each other. The closest friends you’ve ever been, but with space for Lauren, Shane, Liam, and your small wider circle from drama club and the newspaper. It didn’t matter that you were both single. It didn’t matter that you weren’t together. You were past it, evolved into something else. You could share a bed, and it didn’t matter. Guys at school would talk to her, and it didn’t matter. Girls would talk to you, and it didn’t matter. You’d go to the mall, shopping with her, and switch around outfits. Being with her wasn’t some weird brand of torture. You could go to the movies as a group, see a cute girl at the concessions stand, and Karma would go and flirt with her _for_ you, because she was infinitely better at it.

Progress.

Now you’re wondering if that was true at all. Maybe all that growth and all that change, the lives you’ve made for yourselves in college that you used to love hearing about in phone calls and seeing unfold online, just like tonight, was all a façade. Underneath it all, despite everything, nothing has changed. Not one thing. You’re still in love with a girl who isn’t in the right kind of love with you. Suddenly, you’re not 19 anymore, you’re 15 again, confused and hurt with no real idea of why (but you know _exactly_ why). You’re chained to something, but it sure isn’t the rhythm. Briefly, you tear your eyes away from the laptop screen to your phone, Karma’s kissy face – different, older, even more beautiful – fills the screen. You’re not ready to answer, or as eager to anymore. It’s a relief when the ringing stops and the screen goes dark.

You turn back to the laptop. The image has lost none of its power. Part of you wants to slam the laptop closed in disgust, go find Dan, Bianca, Lee and Nikki, and just go out like you planned to.

Except you can’t.

_“Tequilas and sweet nothings.”_

Four words that have somehow managed the impressive feat of hurting you more than ‘just not like that.’ Such an innocuous little caption. But those words aren’t sweet, they sting, and they have barbarous little hooks that’ll take all too long to pull off. You’re supposed to be over this. You’re meant to be happy for her. You’re meant to be at the point where you can type a cute little comment to her in public, and text her for the details in private, genuinely wanting to know exactly what those details are.

Except, you can’t.

You can’t be happy for her. You can’t hit the love button, or even the like button, because it’s not that cute softly-spoken nerdy guy – Wyatt? Walker? _Wade_ – that she introduced you to over Skype a while back, with the Converse and the band shirts who vaguely reminded you of Felix. It’s not Wade Elliott. It’s not even a guy. It’s a _girl_. A girl you’ve never even seen before who everyone else commenting seems to know. That Karma Ashcroft and Olivia Henderson are ‘cute af’ and ‘couple goals’ and twenty thousand other things you remember being written about you and her in the seemingly endless stream of comments on her Instagram.

Karma’s always liked pretty boys, but now she likes pretty girls too. Girls who are not you. So that’s it, you’re the problem. You really _were_ the one she didn’t want.

Oh, the irony.

Olivia Henderson is a different kind of pretty to you. Coachella gypsy girl and Botticelli all rolled into one. It fleetingly crosses your mind how good they look in that picture, and how well they’d take together if you were the one behind the camera. The thought that lingers is how beautiful Karma looks bathed in that low-light. How perfect. How entirely _not_ ordinary.

You’re seething with jealousy, and you’re hurt, and you have no right to be. Any claim you had over her is long gone. It’s irrational, and stupid, and you hate yourself, because Karma looks so happy, so content and at peace with herself. It’s the intimacy of the picture you can’t take, how they’re wrapped around each other, Karma’s head on the other girl’s shoulder, nestled against her face. She used to hold you like that when you’d watch trashy TV and even trashier movies. You used to feel her long eyelashes flutter against your cheek. In private. Never in public. She was never brave enough with you. It’s then that you realise it, belatedly, Karma’s wearing your bomber jacket. The one with the striped cuffs that she picked out for you on one of your mall sprees. She wore it first, while you walked around hand in hand and shared milkshakes and soft pretzels, sneaking to dip your feet in the big water fountain outside when it got too hot. You traded it on a weekly basis, and it always smelt of her perfume when you got it back. She took it with her to New York, and you let her.

Now, the sight of it makes your rage flare. You want to jump on a plane and rip it off her back. You want to slap her across the face and tell her that she’s broken your heart. Again. You want to rant and scream that honestly you don’t think that heart ever fully mended. You want to tell Olivia that she’s the luckiest girl in the world, and if she ever so much as harms a hair on Karma’s head you’ll kill her without a moment’s hesitation. But you won't, and you can’t. You have no right, remember? Now, you’re the crazy jealous one. How times change.

This time, you manage to tear yourself away from the screen, spinning in your desk chair to turn your back on it, only to realise your phone is ringing. Again. And it’s Karma. Again. You snatch it off the desk, furious when tears – bitter, bitter tears – start to fall, swiping at them, but you’re too late to stop it.

“What?” you snap. “What do you want?”

The harshness in your voice makes Karma’s breath hitch on the line.

She’s somewhere busy; likely the bar in the picture, and you can hear her moving to somewhere quieter.

“I didn’t want you to find out like that,” she begins. There’s a telltale shake in her voice that belies how calm she’s trying to sound.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Karma,” you try for similar evenness, raking your free hand through your hair, keeping hold and tugging to keep you from screaming at her through the phone.

“I do,” she says, soft and small. You lean back in your chair, eyes closed. It inspires a different kind of pain that sits square in your chest. A pain you’d learned to live with and you thought you’d learned to ignore. Older, wiser, evolved.

How wrong you were.

This isn’t just about the fact that you never really were on the same page. It’s about so much more than that. It’s about history, and a love, a closeness, that you’ve never felt with another person in your life. She knows it too. You suck in a breath. A sob escapes, and you wince, hoping she didn’t catch it.

“Please don’t cry, Amy.”

Of course she heard. Perfect.

“It just happened, it felt right, OK?,” she continues, jumping straight to an apology. “I didn’t purposefully _not_ tell you. I never meant to hurt you. Kristen tagged me in it before I could tell her not to. I wanted to talk to you first …”

She’s still talking about Kristen and Courtney, her friends from a cappella group, the photographs, a night out to celebrate their win at their latest competition, and that’s when it hits you – she’s done this before; intercepted to protect you. How many times? How many people? Why is she even doing it? She doesn’t owe you anything. You were never girlfriends, and fake girlfriends doesn’t count, no matter how hard you wished it did. Somehow, her taking this measure makes the whole _fucking_ thing about ten thousand times worse.

Her doing this means Olivia means something to her, but more than that, you still mean something to her, and you didn’t know if that was still true. You don’t know what any of this means.

“And it never felt right with me?”

The question pops out before you realise.

“That’s not what I meant,” she sounds wounded, like you accused her of something. Maybe you did.

“So what’s right? The time, the place, the fact she wears pink on Wednesdays?” you reply, flippantly. You can’t help the laughter that escapes you, empty and hollow. It isn’t remotely funny.

“Fuck you, Amy!” she spits, angrily.

Good. Now things are a little more even.

“Well, we did.” There it is again, that empty laughter. “Or have you conveniently forgotten what happened the night before you left for New York?”

Silence.

Her breath hitches on the line, and you think she’s crying.

Suddenly, that little victory you had doesn’t feel so great.

Her reply is small and quiet, almost a whisper, laced with awe and a particular kind of sadness. “How could I possibly forget?”

Now the silence is yours. It’s been a long time since you’ve heard her talk like that, and you remember with painful accuracy what she said. It feels longer than the year it’s actually been since that night; wrapped in each other, her face inches from yours, cloaked in the bittersweet darkness of an unfamiliar room, knowing that it was all limited.

_“Amy, I do love you.”_

Time wasn’t on your side. It never has been.

“I have to go now,” you hear yourself say, calm and disembodied. It’s not what you want to say.

You want to say another four words, ‘I still love you,’ but you don’t. She’s with someone else now. No matter how it hurts you, that’s the truth of it. You missed your chance. Those versions of you are gone. Lost.

“I know,” she replies, forlorn, and you don’t know what that means either. This is too much.

You stay on the line, listening to her breathe. For a moment, you close your eyes, making your breaths match hers. You find the rhythm easily. Too quickly, the line goes dead. It’s best. For now at least.

Heaving out a long, unsteady breath, you pocket your phone, startled when there’s a loud knock on your dorm door.

“Hey, Amy, are you coming? Everyone wants to get rolling before the line to get into Q is too long.”

It’s Dan. He’s the last thing you need right now. It’s too much to explain the latest twist in the saga, even if he and everyone else know a lot of the earlier chapters. Bianca will give the smart advice, she always does. Nikki and Lee will nod sympathetically and decry Olivia and Karma as _the worst ever_. Dan will buy you drinks and you’ll dance to shitty electropop.

It’s the formula you all adopt for each other. Tried and tested.

You just need to forget. You need time, and you need space. You’ll be fine. You’ll get over this. You and Karma will repair. That’s the way it’s always been.

The passing years have given you a lot of practice at papering over the cracks.

“Give me one sec,” you reply, flustered, grabbing for your shirt. He pops his head around the door when you’re still pulling it on.

“Oh shit, sorry man, I didn’t know you were still getting ready,” he glances away, but you wave him in anyway.

He already has a beer in his hand, taking a sip as he rounds you while you head for the tiny ensuite bathroom to fix your hair and makeup for the second time. From the mirror across the room you can see he’s staring at your ass, but you don’t care.

“So, what happened, Aims?” he asks, still sipping on his beer, a free hand mussing up his hair. It’s red, dyed, growing out. It’s not the right red though.

You ignore the faint twitch of pain at his use of ‘Aims.’

“That happened,” you point toward the laptop, and he scoots over to look at it.

His beer stalls on the way to his mouth. “ _Fuck._ ”

It says everything.

“Yeah,” you shrug, answering everything at once. He eyes you wearily when you take his beer and down the rest. “Let’s go,” you add, pulling him out the door before he can argue.

Hours from now, Karma’s Facebook will be full of tagged pictures of you out with them, and you won’t care. You won’t care to untag yourself so it won’t hurt her, because you want her to hurt too. You won’t care because you’ll be too many drinks down, and when Dan flirts with you, you’ll flirt back, because he’s fun, and it’s easy, and uncomplicated. You’ll stop ignoring what’s been between you since day one, and stop trying to deny that those feelings are getting stronger every day. You’ll end up drunk and in his bed, because things can just ‘feel right’ for you too.

Facebook won't tell Karma that, but you wish it would.


	2. Treading Water [Amy]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Karma and Amy prepare for college and try to deal with their impending separation, packing up Amy’s room reveals something unexpected from their past.
> 
> _“You’ve been here with her like this before.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For general story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11279787/chapters/25228971). We’re so glad you’re loving this story, your response has been wonderful. We hope you continue to enjoy this journey. Chapter object: a Post-It note. Credit to Tyler Knott Gregson for proving the inspiration for this chapter via his [Daily Haikus](http://tylerknott.com/post/99453829052/standing-on-the-edge-promising-you-we-can-fly). You can see the other objects [here](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0b67c043b698a494a9c887c244dda03b/tumblr_opw7rkaTRC1txkikoo1_1280.jpg).

_1 Year Earlier_

New York. This time tomorrow, Karma will be in New York. You’re proud of her. So beyond proud that she got accepted to Marymount, and she’s thrown herself into her music. She deserves to spread her wings. But all of that doesn’t mean you’ll miss her any less. Once, back when you were making choices and filling in applications, it felt simple and easy because they were just ideas on a page. New York and Seattle. You were both too busy encouraging each other to think about what it really meant should those plans come to fruition. The distance would be good for you both, you said. College would be a great experience, and there’s always email and Skype. It’s no distance at all.

Except, it is, and it’s not just a name on a list anymore. It a real decision with real consequences. You can feel the gulf between you growing already, widening without your consent. She’s been here with you for most of the evening, after your mom pulled off one of her special farewell dinners and just about everyone gatecrashed, so you haven’t really had a chance to talk. Even with Shane, Liam, and Lauren being idiots and flailing around in the pool, while you attempted to play Marco Polo and chicken fight with Karma on your shoulders, everything has been tinged with sadness. Every times she looks at you, it seems like she’s going to burst into tears, so actually, that lack of opportunity to speak has been beneficial.

It’s late now. Gifts have been exchanged – a memento box from you, and a mix CD from her, with handwritten lyrics and artwork. She’s not allowed to open the box until New York, but the CD is playing now, bouncy, shiny pop from your middle school and early high school years filtering out of your laptop speakers. It hurts a little less with every track change, but there’s a melancholy undertone to _High School Musical_ songs that weren’t there when you were seven. Karma’s sleeping over for tonight. She moved out a while ago, after graduation, and you’ve basically lived at her parents new little apartment since then, but it’s nice to be here with her. Alone. Together.

You’ve been packing yourself for a little over an hour; your mom and Karma press ganged you into it. In a few days, it’s your turn and you’ve done nothing beyond getting plane tickets for the flight out. Karma’s taken everything into hand, seemingly happy for the distraction, dividing up everything you own into neat piles – you’re useless at this kind of thing, you can’t fold for shit, and all those hours she worked at Forever 21 last summer have made her into some kind of folding machine – labelling what you need and boxing up what you don’t for Goodwill. You keep getting distracted with photos, and yearbooks, and teddies, surrounded by your past in the middle of the floor.

The last thing to check over is your mannequin man. He’s been your bulletin board for all things – despite the fact you actually _have_ a bulletin board – since middle school. It’s been years since you’ve vacuumed this corner of your room for fear the suction would send all the Post-Its scattering, never to be put back in the right places. It’s a delicate ecosystem. It _was_ a delicate ecosystem. You’re not sure he should come with you to Seattle. So you’re left crawling around on your knees instead, turning the mannequin slowly, picking off one note at a time. Most of what’s collected in the huge heap of neon you’ve gathered is stupid little notes full of love hearts, smiley faces, and dubious stick figures acting out things, but still it makes you smile to sort through them. The only things missing from this picture are your yo-yos and terrible haircut, her braces, tons of chewing gum, a stack of _Cosmo Girl_ magazines, and the excessive lingering scent of the vanilla body spray she used to douse herself in.

“Find anything interesting?” she asks, sweetly, mid-fold.

“Not really, just lots of things about how you’re destined to be the future Mrs. Cullen,” you tease, holding it up for her to see.

“Oh God! Why did you not get me out of that phase sooner?” she groans, burying her face in your newly folded sweater.

There she is, Karma Ashcroft in all her middle school bubble handwriting glory.

You shrug, barely able to keep from grinning when you reply, “Kristen Stewart?”

She bursts into laughter, full and bright. “Touché,” she declares, throwing the sweater at you so fast that it hits you full in the face.

You fall backwards, right into the mannequin, sending it crashing with a horrendous thud, and the notes go flying everywhere. “Hey!” you cry, voice half muffled in the sweater, until you toss it away, finding yourself in a tangle of plastic mannequin limbs and Post-Its. “Your aim is fucking lethal!”

“Sorry!” she says, rushing over to help you, barely able to keep from laughing as she helps you up. “For the record, you still can’t catch.”

“My one failing!” you reply dramatically, laughing to yourself as you brushing yourself off and survey the damage. “The mannequin man is no more!” you say, pointing down at his head, lolling at you, its limbs dispersed across the room.

She laughs again, and you wish you could take a picture from this angle, but she’d never stay still, and she’d feel too self-conscious if you went to get your camera. It wouldn’t be the same. Your memory will have to do.

When you reach behind, there’s a note stuck to the pocket of your jean shorts. It’s different from all the others, neatly written in the long, sloped, elegant hand Karma perfected right before high school. All the teachers used to make her write on the board because it was so neat. You’d know that handwriting anywhere. It’s beautiful.

   
_“Standing on the edge_  
_promising you we can fly,_  
_will you leap with me?”_

   
She’s not laughing anymore. Neither are you.

“Karm, what is this?”

You keep looking at it, re-reading and re-reading, trying not to make connections with other words you’d confessed in this room, years ago: pained, confused, desperate words, aching to be loved. Somehow, you can feel that same kind of pain on the indents of the paper when you brush your fingertips over it, tracing the words.

“It’s nothing,” she laughs, nervously. “I wrote that months ago,” she continues, hurriedly backing away from you, toward the multitude of clothes and boxes. Out of your line of sight and beyond your reach. She’s still talking, rushing to fill the silence that’s opened up, hurriedly folding as if her life depends on it. “It was graduation, I was drunk. You know what it’s like,” she shrugs, still avoiding eye contact, “people say all that sentimental bullshit.”

It _is_ bullshit, but not for the reason Karma’s saying. She believes in things like this. Sentiment is never false with her. You have a page long message-turned-letter of dedication in the back of your yearbook to prove it, but all those heartfelt, beautiful words are nothing like the words in this note. These come from somewhere else. Someplace else.

That’s why she’s so afraid. That’s why your heart is in your throat, and the room suddenly feels twice as big as it did before when you start to cross it.

“Turn around and say that to my face,” you say, your hand hovering near her shoulder.

You’ve been here with her like this before. It’s never ended well, when you’ve found yourselves on the edge of something like this. History is record enough. But, this doesn’t feel like all those other moments. It’s a risk to push her like this, but you don’t really have the luxury of time.

She bows her head, the t-shirt in her hand drops to the floor. In a small, shaky voice she replies, “I can’t.”

Your heart sinks. For the briefest of moments, you’re angry with her. You’ve heard all this before. Except, it’s not quite like before either. The way she says it sounds different. The intent behind it is different. You’re not just imagining it. She doesn’t want to say those words anymore; they’re not said from a place of confidence. They’re said from a place of fear. She really _can’t_ say them.

Cautiously, you touch her shoulder, and she slowly turns to face you. When you look in her eyes, they’re brimming with tears.

“Yes you can,” you prompt, gently.

“When you never said anything …” she begins, around a soft sob. “I thought you didn’t feel the same anymore, that it was all over, and you didn’t want to talk about it, so I just,” she pauses, sniffing back tears, “I just let go of it. Of us. Of you.”

You shake your head sadly, feeling tears spring up when you reply, “It’s never over, Karma,” moving closer to her, “I didn’t even know it was there until now.”

Right now, you should be on cloud nine. Karma feels the same as you always have, and she didn’t even really need to say it. You weren’t imagining it all this time. You weren’t wrong to keep that tiny corner of your heart just for her. You weren’t foolish to hope. You weren’t foolish to love her when doing so felt beyond reason and everyone else said it was wrong to still feel the way you did.

She nods, stepping forward, so you’re that little bit closer. Close enough to touch. “But you know now,” she says, her voice shaking. When she reaches up to touch your face, her hands are shaking too.

“I do,” you breathe, tilting your head down at the moment Karma lifts hers up.

Who needs words anyway?

And you wait. You wait. For the moment that she presses her lips to yours, cautious, uncertain, but wanting. And then, it happens. She brushes her lips against yours in the lightest of presses, playing out in real-time what you’ve dreamed of for years. It takes you far too long to kiss back, frozen, your brain caught between the dream and the real thing, utterly thrown. But then, you do kiss her. It’s hard and hurried, too greedy and too eager, but you can’t help it, not when she moans into your mouth, and her hands are all over you, grasping at the back of your t-shirt. All you can think as you walk backwards to the bed, following her lead, is: she means it this time. Everything. The pressure of her mouth on yours; her tongue in your mouth, searching you out with long, open mouthed kisses that make you feel kind of dizzy.

Before you realise, you’re climbing onto the bed and Karma’s tugging at your t-shirt pulling it off with an impatience that’s almost a surprise, but then not. Belatedly, it dawns on you then, as she grabs the back of your neck and pulls you on top of her: she’s been waiting too; the timeline just runs in parallel.

“Is this OK?” you manage, breathlessly, between one kiss and the next, your hands resting just below the hem of her dress. “Are you sure?”

She studies you for a moment, swallowing hard before giving a short nod. “So sure.”

Her reply comes as the nicest kind of relief. You’re both smiling now.

You let out a long, unsteady breath, before you kiss her again; softer, slower, deeper, letting those kisses drift to her neck. Carefully, you slide your hands upwards, pushing the thin material of her dress with it. You’re terrified of going too fast. Of doing something wrong and hurting her somehow. Of it somehow being all too much for her too fast, and she’ll slam the brakes on all of this like she has so many times before. But you have to stop. Karma wants this. You want this. So much.

For here, for right now, you both want this.

She wants you. You can feel in the way she arches her body into your touches, how she reaches for you again, kissing you full and hard on the mouth, her hands in your hair, tugging slightly, relishing that she can. So, you stop thinking, you stop worrying, and just let yourself sink into the moment, sink into her as you both work to get her dress off and you out of your shorts with the least space between you possible. It’s awkward and kind of difficult. Suddenly, you’re alternating between kisses and laughter and it doesn’t feel so awkward or strange to be with her like this. It feels right. It feels perfect. The second you try to stop kissing her and take the briefest break for air, to kick those shorts off, she pulls you back into another kiss, hungry for it, hungry for you in a way you never dreamed she would be.

Now you’re almost naked, it feels serious and important again, but in the best kind of way. You know when she wraps her arms around you, trading soft kisses, still breathless, that she trusts you, that she’s ready. Even though your heart is hammering out of your chest, and your hands are still shaking, giving away your nervousness, as you slide your fingertip underneath her bra strap, and hook it off her shoulder, you know this is where you need to be. You’re not about to let this moment go.

You want to store everything away for safekeeping. You want to remember the way her breath hitches. You want to remember the elegant line of her neck when she tilts it back to let you kiss her more. You want to remember the warmth of her mouth, her skin. Her eyes, staring deeply into yours, trying desperately to say everything she can’t quite yet. Her nails on your back. Her sweat. Her taste on your tongue. Her name on your lips will be your new favourite word.

This night is the beginning and the end of everything.  The edge is gone now. You’ve taken the leap, falling together. Slowly. Finally. The risk paid off. The fear of losing you beat the fear of falling.

Hours from now, you’ll wake up alone in your bed, and she’ll be long gone, on a plane that takes her to her new life, the time for sleepy kisses, soft touches, and silent tears will be over, but it won’t matter, because you’ll both have this. No one can touch it. No one change it. She’s yours. You’re hers. Fact. Whatever happens now, wherever you end up, you’ll always have this night. You already know she’s worth the wait. You already know she’s worth all the pain that came before.

New York. This time tomorrow. Karma will be in New York, and you want to give her something to remember you by. You want to give her the safest of landings.


	3. Set Adrift [Karma]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Karma and Amy reunite in Seattle for a long overdue catch up, their plans for the trip quickly shift gear, leading Karma to a surprising confession.
> 
> _“She’d have every right to ask for the truth, whatever that is.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For general story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11279787/chapters/25228971). Thank you so much for the fantastic feedback on this story. We’re so pleased! This chapter marks the perspective shift in the story, and Karma takes over the events. _Chapter object:_ a note. You can see the other objects [here](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0b67c043b698a494a9c887c244dda03b/tumblr_opw7rkaTRC1txkikoo1_1280.jpg).

_2 Years Later_

You ruined everything. Again. You ruined everything because that’s what you do. Karma Ashcroft: queen of fuck ups, breaker of hearts, and waster of perfectly good chances. You left Amy to wake up in bed alone without you. Again. You have no idea why you keep making the same idiotic mistake. You have no idea why Amy continues to tolerate your behaviour. You have no idea why she hasn’t cut off all contact with you or even how she can continue to be your friend when you constantly screw her over – often, quite literally.

Except, you do. The fuck up, repent, repair cycle happens because you adore each other. It happens because your paths keep crossing, back and forth on an infinite loop. It happens because you can meet up after two years and slot right into Amy’s world without trouble, like you never even left, even though this trip is the first – and likely last – time you’ve ever visited her in Seattle. It happens because you can go out drinking, dancing, trawling all the spots she’s come to love – no fake ID’s please, you’re legal – come back to her apartment and have the best sex of your life – she really _has_ grown up, no shaky hands and awkward fumbling anymore, practice really does make _perfect._ It happens because all of this terrifies you.

So, you do what you always do when the real weight of what Amy’s love means, and how much you love her – desperately, endlessly, hopelessly – threatens to finally settle on your shoulders, you ran. You ran all the way downstairs and called a cab. You ran all the way to the airport, speeding to an early flight to make your escape without messy goodbyes and angry recriminations. In the end, all that running really has gotten you nowhere at all, because you’re stranded in Departures, with nothing to do but wait. Any second you expect her to come marching in, demanding answers.

She’d have every right to ask for the truth, whatever that is.

_We regret to inform you that flight Delta 1996 has been delayed …_

Karma is indeed a bitch.

Honestly, you’re beginning to think your entire life is one extended game of self-sabotage, and you’ll never break the cycle. You were so glad that things between Amy had gotten back to something approaching normal. The daily texts and emails were back. The lengthy phone calls were back, and somehow, it was OK to not mention Olivia or anyone else you were both dating beyond what’s socially permissible through the use of a like button or expressed with emojis. An inelegant quasi armistice on romance. But that meant not talking about what happened before New York too. That wonderful, mesmeric thing, that was about so much more than giving in to the last vestiges of teenage lust and curiosity. It’s the proverbial elephant in the room.

You always thought you’d get to a point in your life where the idea of being with Amy beyond one-night stands wouldn’t terrify you, especially after Olivia, but it’s not like that at all. The passage of time hasn’t allowed clarity to descend.  You’re meant to know more, you’re almost 22, fresh from graduating from one of the best schools in the country, and it seems like some sort of accomplishment until you remember it would take you another 14 years to be eligible to run for president. In that context, you’ve achieved nothing, except learning how much alcohol you can tolerate and that peroxide blonde is really _not_ your colour.

For the most part, this trip has been fun. A week of hanging out, catching up with Amy with a photoshoot for some headshots thrown in to really get your Broadway ambitions kicked into gear.  It’s been far too long since you’ve been in the same space, discounting holidays, enforced social gatherings, and the one decent opening night you’ve ever had outside of college productions. You’ve had audition after horrendous cattle call audition, with only a few callbacks. College theatre and working with friends will only get you so far. You’re talented, and so are they, but the kind of luck that makes _Avenue Q_ and _RENT_ happen doesn’t come easy. Truthfully, the visit was about escaping the grind for both of you. All too fast, your passions have become hobbies, with Amy working as a bartender and a waitress in between filming work, and you as an office girl in between auditions.

In an ideal world, you’d be on Broadway, and Amy would be well on her way to shooting documentaries or editorials instead of kids birthday parties and senior class photos. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have left her in that bed, you’d still be in it, right with her, whispering the sweet nothings you were always too afraid to give voice to.

You don’t live in an ideal world.

Except when you’re with Amy, it feels like you might. It feels that way because when you’re with her, you’re the focus of her attention, the only girl in the room, the only girl in the world. You like that, you crave it, and devour it, and hate yourself for it, because you’re still foolish enough to hope you’ll find it in someone else. That’s not because you don’t love her, it’s precisely because you do love her. You love her too much.

You love the way her eyes light up when she really smiles. You love the way she laughs at your stupid jokes. You love the way she can’t really dance, and has to practice options on a menu silently to herself before she gets to the front of the line. You love how excited she gets about new movies and records, and how she plans her life around the television season. You love watching her work, developing the pictures in her little shoebox darkroom because she still uses film. You love seeing how she sees the world and where you fit in it.

She makes you feel beautiful. She makes you _believe_ you’re beautiful.

That’s why you can’t stop staring at the note you found in your jacket pocket when you first sat down in here to wait out your delay.

_“You are beautiful in all your ways.”_

She gave it to you yesterday, along with a kiss on the cheek when you were all set to start the real shoot, the practice shots and the screwing around playing Marilyn Monroe to Amy’s Douglas Kirkland while you got drunk on tequila were well and truly over. Amy was in serious mode, and you couldn’t help but find it unbelievably sexy. You told her so and she smiled. The picture she took right after documents how deeply you blushed. 

Re-reading that paper now, it feels less like a confidence booster and an encouragement to relax, and more an acknowledgement that she knew you’d do exactly this - that you’d get scared, turn tail, and run – but she forgives you and loves you anyway, in spite of everything you’ve done wrong. God, you love her. Why is that so hard to say? Why can you only ever say it in the hushed dark, skin-to-skin, absorbed in the bliss of being with her? Why can’t you shout it from the rooftops? Why can’t you sing it at the top of your lungs?

 _Can’t_. You loathe that word. You loathe it for all the pain it’s caused you both. You loathe it for how woefully inadequate it makes you feel and for how much has been lost, and broken, and wasted because you said it. Again.

Amy’s always been the one who says ‘can’ instead of ‘can’t’ without hesitation, even when she’s scared of the consequences.

You have to do it. You have to try. There’s only so many times you can let her go before someone will take your place forever.

Before you can second guess yourself, you pick up your hand luggage and go. You’re running through the lounge as fast as your heels will let you, the tails of your trench coat fanning out behind you like a cape. Screw the people staring when you rush past without saying excuse me. Screw the flight. Screw that shitty office job. Screw the casting directors who say your voice is too poppy. Screw New York and competing with Kristen and Courtney for the same parts so you’re enemies rather than friends. Being here with Amy and seeing her photographs has made you realise how little you really know yourself and what you want to do with your life. For the longest time, you thought it was New York. You love Manhattan, you love the people, you love to sing and be on stage, but all of that means nothing if there’s no one to go home to at the end of the day who really matters. You’re done with hook-ups and getting wasted on the weekends. You’re done with wishing your life away. You’re done wishing you were someone else, somewhere else.

All you need is … _Amy_.

Amy’s there, right in front of you, the only thing separating you are the glass revolving doors.  She’s standing there in the pouring rain near the line of waiting cabs, waving shyly and wearing that same sweet little smile she always has whenever she sees you in public. She’s not mad, she’s not upset, she’s just waiting, patiently, like always.

You edge toward each other almost coy, painfully aware of where you are. This is a private conversation in a very public place. It’s always been that way when it comes to Amy, you think. The rules have never applied. You should know, you’re the one who’s struggled for so long to make them stick.

“How do you always know?” you ask, quietly, your fingers brushing against hers, holding back from doing anything more.

Her reply is simple, and easy, said with a small shrug, “I know you.”

You nod, because she’s right. She’s always been ten steps ahead of you. Smarter, wiser, more in tune with herself. She’s self-aware and introspective in a way you’ve never been.

“I’m sorry I left you,” you begin, slightly too loud to make yourself heard over the rain and the rush of traffic. “I really am.”

She just tilts her head, nodding in acknowledgment.

“You need to know why, Amy, and that’s hard for me,” you glance down at your shoes briefly, trying to regain your composure before you look back at her again.

She takes both of your hands in her own, squeezing lightly. It’s all the encouragement you need; she’s waited long enough.

“Loving you, it terrifies me. It terrifies me because you’re _everything_ , Amy. I know that now, and I get so scared because I feel like I don’t deserve you and I don’t know what I’d do if you were the one who left,” you choke back a sob, and she squeezes your hands tighter.

It’s hard to keep looking at her, seeing tears brimming in her eyes. You’ve caused so many of them.

“I don’t know how to be in the world without you, so I do it first, I push you away,” you pause to gather yourself again, feeling your voice crack, thin and tight, threatening to give out. “There were no articles in _Cosmo Girl_ to tell me how I was supposed to cope when my best friend became more than my best friend and I had no one to talk to about any of it.”

It’s stupid to say, but it’s true. How could you talk to your best friend about who you were in love with when the person you were in love with was your best friend?

She breaks her silence to laugh, beautiful and bright. It makes your heart seize in your chest in the best way. You feel lighter all of a sudden, like she’s the only thing that’s keeping you on the ground, saving you from floating way up into the atmosphere.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that?” she’s closer now, talking in softer tones.

“I’m sorry,” you reply, barely above a whisper. She’s close enough to hear.

“Stop saying sorry for being afraid. It’s OK to be afraid. I am too.”

“You are?” It slips out before you realise.

“There was no one for me to talk to either, not really. Shane tried, but he never really understood. No one does.”

“I know. I have to stop running from this.”

She sighs, shaking her head a little. “Karma, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do all this time,” she puffs out a breath to steady herself. Her eyes never leave yours.

“All these years I’ve been asking you to stay,” she says, simple and certain, reaching up to cradle your face in her hands. “Just stay.”

When she says that, anything sensible you were thinking of saying next flies out of your head. You let out something like a sigh or some kind of swoon. No one’s ever said the things that she does. No one loves you like she does, and you’re tired of fighting it. Enough. How could you have ever truly left her? You might not have lived in the same house, in the same city, or even the same state for a long time, but if you’re honest with yourself, she’s never really left _you_. Somehow, she’s always there. To keep hurting each other and deny how you feel is ridiculous. No more. 

There’s nothing else you can do but kiss her. Nothing else is right, nothing else is worthy of what she’s just said and how it makes you feel; head spinning, heart speeding. You just reach for her and do it, pressing your lips to hers a little harder than you intended. It feels like you’re drawing a line under everything that came before it. She’s frozen for a second when you pull away, taken by surprise, but you don’t care that it’s raining or that you’re in public, you need to kiss her again.

So you do.

It’s slow, and deep, and passionate, like those kisses in movies that always felt unreal and out of reach, but everything’s different now. This isn’t a movie, it’s real. You know it by the warm brush of her lips against yours. You know it by the way she wraps her arms around your neck, pulling you closer, holding you tight.

You ruined everything. Again. Almost. You ruined everything because that’s what you do. Karma Ashcroft: queen of fuck-ups, breaker of hearts, and waster of perfectly good chances. You left Amy to wake up in her bed alone without you. Again. But tomorrow it’ll be different. She won’t be alone, you’ll be right there next to her. You have no idea why or even how Amy still loves you, but some things can’t be explained, some things just are.

Some things are meant to be.


	4. Surfacing [Karma]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Settled with Amy in Seattle, Karma comes to realise that love doesn’t always require grand gestures.
> 
> _“You don’t need to choose anymore, that’s what she’s taught you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For general story notes see [chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11279787/chapters/25228971). So here we are again fair reader, the last chapter! This has been such a fun little story for us to collaborate on. Thank you to everyone who’s left kudos and comments. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as we did working on it. _Chapter object:_ a book. You can see the other objects [here](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0b67c043b698a494a9c887c244dda03b/tumblr_opw7rkaTRC1txkikoo1_1280.jpg). Includes excerpts from 'Looking for Ice Cream,' featured in Courtney Peppermell's poetry collection _Pillow Thoughts_.

_3 Years Later_

Everything is perfect now. Really. You’ve become one of those nauseating couples who spam people’s Facebook and Instagram feeds with cutesy pictures wearing sunglasses and making kissy faces. It’s taken you five years and change to get your shit together – and really, life is an evolutionary process – you’re still learning, negotiating. You’re happy and settled in Fremont with Amy in your very own little apartment, building a life together. It’s a different life to the one you imagined back when you lived with Kristen and Courtney in Manhattan, dating Wade and Olivia. Back when you were convinced you’d be the next Jessie Mueller, and your life revolved around the stage and a cappella competitions.

But, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. How could any of this be bad?

You’re ridiculously, madly, stupidly, deeply in love with Amy, and it’s _right_ . It’s completely right, and you’re not sure how you’ve managed to make it, but you have. You’re not happy all the time – no one is, unless they’re a daytime TV quiz host or hopped up on drugs. It’s been a struggle to re-negotiate who and what you are to each other. You’re both working hard to move to a bigger place in Capitol Hill, to be closer to Amy’s work now she waitresses at The Lookout (the first time she took you there on a date, and you saw The Space Needle, it felt like some kind of dream), and you’re a host at the Grand Hyatt. It’s something you fell into, tired of being the office girl who made coffee and photocopies between dipping into the theatre scene, and made the odd trip to New York for auditions that never worked out.

The chord had to be cut sometime, and once you got truly settled in your job, greeting people and getting to meet new ones every day, you realised it was just another kind of performance, and it was just as fun to do.

When you finally came to live with Amy in Seattle, a month or so after the huge rom-com moment at the airport, you didn’t expect just to slot easily into her life, convinced you’d napalm everything she’d created for herself. The opposite is true. She and her friends welcomed you, and you count Bianca, Lee, and Nikki amongst your best friends now. When Kristen, Courtney, and Wade make it out for weekend visits, it’s pretty much perfect. You all get along and like similar things, so it’s really fun when you all get to hang out.

There were casualties of course, like Olivia and Dan – the mention of his name makes you feel a little strange inside; somewhere between jealousy, and annoyance, and a thing you don’t know how to describe – and you regret that. You both regret the surprisingly large tally of people who have been hurt by your and Amy’s complete inability to understand or act upon what you feel.

No matter how obvious those feelings seemed to everyone else.

Olivia didn’t want to be your second best, and Dan just couldn’t be around Amy anymore, moving out right before you moved in after graduation. They were right to want more, and you were right to accept nothing less than Amy. That’s the truth of it, but still, you didn’t just jump straight into things, and you’re thankful that Amy has the patience to deal with the consequences of that. For the first month, you lived together, but you didn’t share a room, and worked your way back to sharing a bed (which almost killed you both). Baby steps, you said, determined not to ruin it. She agreed, because being together, _really_ being together is intense, and wonderful, and _sexy_ as all hell. You know what it is to love her now, and it’s not _just_ about having really amazing sex all over every possible surface – OK, so it is a lot about that sometimes, you’re very compatible in that way, and you’re stupidly attracted to each other – it’s about how being in love with her can also be sweet, and tender, and you have this kind of bone-deep affection that makes you cry to think about sometimes.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and you have been sometimes, but there’s a big difference now at 24 from when you were 16, dumb and confused. You talk to each other now. She can read you too well, there’s no point in lying to her, all the cards got put the table long ago, and finally you have a Royal Flush instead of a trying to fake it with a High Card to your name, shit out of luck. You hit the jackpot. Ding-ding-ding. The payout hasn’t ended. Yes, she’s your soulmate, your lover (you love saying that, it feels so ridiculously decadent), but she’s still your best friend in the whole world, who doesn’t give a fuck if you walk around in sweatpants and no makeup on your weekends off. You still have your Netflix binges, and movie nights, stuffing yourself with popcorn and cake frosting, except you lie with your head in her lap and she plays with your hair. If it’s been a pretty long week where you’ve barely seen each other – that happens a lot – you don’t get much watching or junk food eating done, and end up having sex on the couch.

There hasn’t been a lot of that lately. Sometimes, you wonder if Broadway darling and filmmaker extraordinaire would’ve given you better hours. Sometimes, you wish you did more than sing in the shower. Sometimes, you wish Amy’s pictures were in galleries instead of on Instagram. Just sometimes. Late night desk duty gives you a lot of time to think. Maybe a little too much, but you’re working on being more self-reflexive and aware. Your whole job is based around attention to need, so you think it’s important you include yourself in it. So does Amy.

That’s where these weird little grocery store dates come from.

You’re buying for your next movie night, and your snack stash is seriously depleted. You have a little over two hours before you start the late shift on the desk, ready to answer queries about bars and places to eat, or handling the room service call for a late night burger craving. Your attention will be everywhere, divided by the phone, emails, guests, delivery men, and gossip, but for now it’s nice to just focus on one person, and one thing – wandering around Whole Foods ticking off the list you’ve written together. Amy’s off work tonight, so she’ll be the one to wait up for you, revived from sleeping most of the day. It was hard at first, but you work around it. The groceries started as a joke, a ‘what have we succumbed to?’ fun thing to tease each other with, but now you not-so-secretly love it, lulled by the sound of the piped in music, the too-bright lights, the metallic bad jazz of the cart with the wonky wheels that Amy pushes along with almost fingertip ease because it’s still pretty much empty. You must look like an odd pair, you in your Hyatt uniform: sleek, primped, professional; and Amy with her hair in a messy bun, barefaced, still in sweatpants and her beloved Washington hoody and Converses. Sure, she looks different to when she’s all dressed for work too – the black t-shirt and skinny jeans gets you, every _fucking_ time – but you love her like this, just looking at her while she surveys the aisle gives you butterflies, swirling around inside you like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

It makes you feel silly, this love, this depth of feeling, like you need some extra pocket outside of yourself to keep it so you have enough room in your heart for the rest of the world. This love, and the beautiful, brilliant girl who's just steps ahead of you – but feels all too far away - is why you’re looking to buy ice cream in November. She isn’t wearing a coat for the sole reason she knows that once you’re outside, bags in hand, you’ll pull her into a hug and share your coat together on the short walk home.

“Remind me why we’re looking for this again?” she asks with a knowing smile. She reaches out blindly for you, knowing that you’ll catch up and take her hand.

“Because you love me,” you reply, softly.

“Oh yeah, that,” she says, with a wink, lacing her fingers with yours.

You don’t know why, but it makes you blush. Maybe because you’re in public, and you like to think of it as some sort of game, to flirt, and tease, and button push because you have a no PDA rule. Amy’s never been into it, and honestly, you’re not either these days. The airport was an exception, but an exception worth the making.

People always say that the bloom falls off the rose, that you’ll gradually find the person less and less interesting; that love becomes habit. She’s not less interesting, and this is no habit, even if you do fit seamlessly into each other’s family photographs. You always did. She always did. This is natural progression.

So, the ice cream is because of love and all those things. Ice cream in November is because Amy is Amy, and she always puts your happiness above her own (which is why her happiness is your other full-time job). Ice cream in November is because of the books you read on the train to work that tell you about other people’s kinds of love. There was one passage in a Courtney Peppernell book you’ve carried around for years, since it was how you filled the waiting time at auditions. You think of it now, because it’s exactly what you’re looking at, exactly what you’re feeling right now, watching Amy hold up a tub of ice cream, looking between it and the rest of the flavours in the cabinet and directing you to choose.

' _And in that moment I knew I loved you more than anyone else I had ever loved.’_

“Which one babe?” _Babe._ It still kind of gets you, makes those butterflies inside party even harder. “Double Dark Chocolate or Vanilla Bean?”

You don’t need to choose anymore, that’s what she’s taught you.

For a moment, you fake pondering, “There’s so many flavours, why limit ourselves?” Another pause as you reach for the other flavour. “Both?”

She smiles, big and bright, it goes all the way to her eyes. “That’s my girl!” she declares, and you drop both kinds into the cart together, grinning like idiots when they land next to each other.

Your heart feels like it might swell to bursting, and it’s nothing, it’s no grand gesture, no expensive ring. It’s just your favourite $5 ice cream, but it’s so much more than that.

“Come here,” you whisper, glancing up at the angle of the store camera.

You press her back against the cabinet, your hands rounding her ass, sliding into the pockets on her sweatpants and squeezing, just a little. Her mouth hangs open, and she has her hands slightly in the air, entirely caught by surprise.

“Whoa, Karm! Wh-wh-what about our no PDA rule?” she stutters, adorably flustered.

You can’t marry this girl with the one who chases you around your apartment in her underwear, picks you up and carries you into the bedroom so you can make it there faster, but then you can, because it’s Amy. Who’s shy, and awkward, and amazing in equal measure. She’s grown and changed so much from the girl you met in that ballpit, but everything you feel for her remains the same.

 _God,_ you love her. You really do love her.

“Oh, _fuck_ the no PDA rule!”

The bemused look on her face shifts to a smirk, and then to a smile when the penny finally drops. You lean up, grabbing her face and crushing your lips against hers hard and fast, in a huge exculpation of air, giggling as you sneak quick kisses, not caring at all who can see. You hope she knows that this isn’t just about testing limits and breaking some silly self-imposed rule. It’s about comfort, and happiness, and confidence. She’s relaxing now, relenting, kissing you for longer, and deeper, and she spins you around, pushing you back into the cabinet, her arms around your waist, holding tight.

This is who you love, and you want the world to know it. You want them to see, you want them to be jealous, you want all that because the fifteen-year-old version of you, and the sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen-year-old you was scared to want it. Scared to take from her, and scared to give because of the moment you’d have nothing left. You didn’t know that love could replenish you, make you better than you ever were without it. You didn’t know love could be so boundless, so without condition.

Reluctantly, you break apart, heads resting together, breathless and giddy.

“Well, that was nice,” she muses. “Definitely worth waking up for.”

“I try,” you offer, feeling more than a little smug. “I try.”

You stay like that for a moment, just holding each other, looking into each other’s eyes, you can’t hear the music, the cart wheels, or feel the too bright lights. The world stops. You’ve hit the pause button.

‘ _I_ _n that moment I knew you were my once in a lifetime. And yet, all we were doing was looking for ice cream.’_

You mouth an ‘I love you,’ before untangling your body from hers, rescuing your cart from where it’s drifted further along the aisle. When you turn back to her, she’s smiling that same sweet smile as that day at the airport, when everything changed and became good. She mouths ‘Always,’ and there comes that too big, too much feeling again.

She catches up with you, putting an arm around you and holds you close. You’re pushing the cart together, even though you don’t need to, and you don’t care who saw that kiss. None of that matters. This is your life, and you love who you love. No excuses. No takebacks. No hiding. Not anymore.

Everything is perfect now. Really. You’ve become one of those nauseating couples who spam people’s Facebook and Instagram feeds with cutesy pictures wearing sunglasses and making kissy faces. You have a life now, that’s so beyond what you ever imagined back in Manhattan. When you come home in the early hours, ready to drop, tired down to your bones, you’ll find Amy waiting up for you, ready to help you into bed and get undressed, just like you do for her. She’ll kiss you slowly, and you’ll make love slower still until you fall asleep in each other’s arms. Just you and Amy.

She’s everything. _Everything_.

Just like you were always afraid of her being. But, you’re not afraid anymore, because now you have her, you have everything too.


End file.
